Strange sea 'ginseng' makes divers risk their lives to search

What is so special about this ginseng that is so expensive?

If cucumbers cost about 1 dollar (about 23,000 VND) per kg, there is a type of "cucumber" that costs 3,000 times more than the regular type (ie nearly 70 million VND/kg). But they are not found on land, but must dive to the bottom of the sea to find them.

That is the sea cucumber (Sea Cucumber), also known as sea cucumber - the common name of a group of marine animals of the class Holothuroidea. In this article, we will find out why sea cucumbers are so expensive?

Why are sea cucumbers so sought after and so expensive?

Sea cucumbers are diverse in size, color, shape and habitat. There are about 1,250 known species of sea cucumber. They are likened to "sea ginseng" because of their high nutritional and medicinal value.

Anatomically, the sea cucumber is a rather strange creature with no moving organs, no eyes, but only a mouth and an anus, so it is difficult to distinguish the head and tail. The body of the sea cucumber is long and hairy, with internal bones located just below the skin.

Around the sea cucumber's mouth there are short tentacles that help them get food. They feed on dead bodies on the seabed and on plankton. Sea cucumbers can be compared to diligent sanitation workers who help clean the ocean.

Holothurian.

As mentioned above, sea cucumbers are very expensive and are hunted as "ginseng" on the seabed. Fishermen even risk their lives to catch these sea cucumbers. Moreover, the demand for sea cucumbers has been increasingly expanded from Asia to Europe and America.

Of course, this demand will make sea cucumbers more and more scarce and divers have to dive deeper to find this "ginseng" species as they are increasingly rare. The more exotic the sea cucumbers, the more spines, the rarer they are, the higher their value.

There are types of sea cucumbers that cost up to $3,500/kg (about VND81 million/kg). The most expensive species of sea cucumber in the world is the Japanese sea cucumber (scientific name: Apostichopus japonicus). It is now an endangered species because of overhunting.

Sea cucumbers are likened to the ocean "ginseng".

The value of sea cucumbers is determined by a chemical compound called Fucosylated glycosaminoglycan in their skin that Asians have used to treat osteoarthritis or gout for decades.

Currently, European researchers also use sea cucumbers to treat cancer or blood clots, so the value of sea cucumbers is also increasing. Many countries such as Morocco, the United States, Papua New Guinea. also began to hunt for this creature.

In the period from 1996 to 2011 alone, the number of countries exporting sea cucumbers increased from 35 to 83. This led to a serious decline in their numbers. In Yucatan, Mexico, the number of sea cucumbers dropped by 95% between 2012 and 2014.

Sea cucumbers eat algae, zooplankton, waste of other animals.

The scarcity also pushed up the price of sea cucumbers by 17% between 2011 and 2016. This prompted divers to risk their lives to hunt for marine 'ginseng'. There have been many people paralyzed due to decompression when diving at depths beyond tolerance.

In the Yucatan, even at least 40 divers have died trying to dive deep to catch sea cucumbers. This defiant action has made 7 species of sea cucumber classified as endangered, at risk of extinction out of 70 commonly exploited species of sea cucumber.

As a result, it causes ecological imbalance and destroys seabed ecosystems in many places. Sea cucumbers take 2 to 6 years to mature and reproduce, so recovering their numbers is not easy.

Moreover, sea cucumbers are externally fertilized, males and females will release sperm and eggs into the seawater and if conditions are favorable, the eggs will be fertilized. The reduced density of sea cucumber means that the probability of egg meeting sperm is greatly reduced.